A herculean effort over the last ten days has seen the amassing of ideas, reviews, notions in and around design, its folly and the 2009 State of Design Festival. In the form of a 20 page newsprint publication – Design Reporter by Ray Edgar, Stuart Geddes, Penny Modra, and Jeremy Wortsman was launched at Iron Designer on Friday evening, just in time for the closing of the 2009 State of Design Festival.

Andrew contributed a piece of the Elwood type tour conducted as part of AGDA’s Back to Basic series, and an illustrated satire of latest logo bashing by the media and the public of the City of Melbourne’s big M by Landor titled – OMG! Wtf?.

The publication is as fresh as they get. There was not time for pushing shapes on white rectangles for weeks, mincing over picture crops, or fussing with type treatments. Greta, the typeface that is, gets a real workout, and the front cover (that doubles as an index) ironically depicts the madness of the last few days of emails, articles, rewrites, pictures, edits and final drafts. Amazing effort guys.

Pick up you copy at The Narrows, Metropolis Books, Lamington Drive and Greville Books – it’s free.

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The 2009 AGIdeas wrap up dinner had a twist. Drinks, food, a big room and then Ken Cato introduced comedian Raymond Crowe. Crowes’s show had a dose of physical comedy, mime and slight of eye. Then the lights dimmed and a audience member held a flat white orb with light projected on it. The simple act of hand shadowing was the last act which mesmorised an unsuspecting audience with the possibility of child like play.

The State Library of Victoria has developed a free exhibition The Independent Type: Books and Writing in Victoria which explores Victoria’s diversity of written culture, stories, and people which allowed the independent literature culture in Victoria to flourish.

The exhibition explores Victoria’s literally markers from traditional Indigenous storytelling, colonial classics to contemporary writing. Writing history is on show, along with a fine collection of rare books, documents, manuscripts, posters and printed matter from the collections of individuals and organisations across the Australia.

Highly recommended for people interested in ink on paper, and the development of Victoria’s literature culture.

State Library of Victoria
Swanston Street, Melbourne
24 April 2009 to 25 October 2009
Visit the exhibition here

After a delayed start, the Studio held it’s sixth open studio night as part of the the 2009 AGIdeas programme. Rather than bore attendees with our work, we thought it might be good to have a mix of outcomes, work, process, brain storming, making, and design and life at the end. The night’s theme was “give and take and give and take”

We put together an informal program that had four stations … real work, process, brain storming and making. The making station allowed guests to simply make their own card, in black and white media only. The brainstorming section was a conversation and feedback sectioning exploring an internet project we are developing and launching soon – everyone’s feedback and effort is most appreciated.

Thank you to our visitors – Marilyn, Kirsty, Morgan, Hayley, James, Tom, Anna, Tess, Gus, Lewis and Aeysha.

Thank you to our ring-ins Sandy Hill, Matthew Remphry, Paul Garbett, Simeon King, Tony King for facilitating the stations.

We finished up at 9.30ish.

As part of the 2009 AGIdeas programme, AGDA Victoria is bringing out from New York, type designer, Tobias Frere-Jones.

Frere-Jones grew up in a world of commercial art, his late father Robyn was advertising copy writer. Robyn was once described as a writer that could make sense of anything impossible to describe. His mother was in the creative business too, as a production manager. Frere-Jones grew up subsequently amid tightly set headlines; which he loathes, artwork and printed ephemera with a purpose.

Tobias Frere-Jones along with Jonathan Hoefler runs a small yet universally praised type house Hoefler Frere-Jones based in New York City. It is not every day that a genuine type designer, not a graphic designer that designs the odd typeface, presents their version of design to a willing Australian audience.

Type designers can be placed as one of the unassuming custodians of language itself. Type designers have a direct linage with creators written language since cuneiform letterforms developed in 34th century BC. Type designers work is a means of transporting written expression through history, and it also happens to be handsome to delicate individual creative expression.

What makes a type designer special, above and beyond your average graphic is that on the surface their work is a process blatantly familiar – as everyone through the process of hand writing designs and constructs letterforms in day-to-day communications. However behind this seemingly simple façade of developing letterforms is a rigorous, obsessive attention to detail, extraordinary foresight, and the ability to comprehend designs through the eyes and minds countless graphic designers, end users.

Type designers have to imagine their typefaces used by the worst of graphic designers through to the best. The better the type design it seems, the better it can make the most mundane and impractical design appeal to the innocent on lookers.

See Tobias’s exhibition here

TOBIAS FRERE-JONES (USA)
MAY 4 – JUNE 6
THE NARROWS

Tobias Frere-Jones
MAY 4 – JUNE 6 2009
The Narrows
Level 2
141 Flinders Lane
Melbourne VIC
AUSTRALIA 3000
+ 61 03 9654 1534

Open Wed to Fri 12 – 6 pm,
Sat 12 – 5

OPENS MONDAY APRIL 4, 6PM

Read about Tobias in The Age. Visit Hoefler Frere-Jones here